In today's era, children are growing up faster than they did years ago and it can be seen in the purchasing influence that they have over their parents. While it's well known that children hold some sway over their parents' purchasing decisions, what's new is that the age in which they start to influence their parents seems to get lower every decade. Moreover, kids are no longer considered as one group from 2-11 as they were in the 1960s. Instead, it seems to be more accurate to divide them into five age segments. The Advertising Educational Foundation names the five segments the following way: toddlers (0-3 yrs), preschoolers (2-5 yrs), kids (6-8 yrs), tweens (9-12 yrs), and teens (13-15 yrs). According to LAMAC, Griffin Macal conducted a study with a sample of 62 mothers with at least one child between 2-5 years old. This study was conducted to determine the influence that preschoolers have on their parents. The kids on the panel spent 10-20 hours each week watching programming for preschoolers as reported by their mothers. Through the programming they watch, the children learn to recognize characters that they later see on product packaging. As one of the mothers indicated, "They know the pictures on the boxes more than the brands. They wanted the Oral B toothpaste because Barney was on it. They wanted the Frosted Cheerios when the Rugrats were on the box. They are very familiar with the cartoon stuff." In the study, 75% of the moms indicated that their preschoolers have a certain degree of influence on them when it comes to their buying decisions. Generally, these decisions are related to food/snacks, books, TV, and movies/videos. The mothers on the panel agree that it's a combination of technology, abundance of branding messages and new trends in parenting that have caused things to change.

Additionally, Adlatina reported that Mediaedge:cia and Nickelodean Latin America individually conducted a study on infants with regards to TV. In both studies, it was found that television is in fact a strong medium and can sometimes become a babysitter in certain instances. It was found that 42% of Argentinean homes with children have at least two television sets, 80% have cable and 43% of the children have a TV in their room. Furthermore, the highest viewing times for children including both cable and open TV are from 6:00 p.m.-12:00 a.m. followed by 1:00 p.m.-5:59 p.m. When analyzing the data, the main medium appears to be TV, which reaches 99.7% of children every day.

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Sources: http://www.lamac.org/English/News/Articles/Kids_Getting_Older_Younger/, http://www.adlatina.com/notas/print.php?id_noticia=33112